My Dog Ate It…

22Feb

I came home from work yesterday and found that our puppy had left us a few surprises. No, not the warm little piles of stinkiness that she used to leave us. No, this time the surprises were various items from the office that were chewed up and lying on the living room floor.

This isn’t the first time she’s done this, by far, and we know she has a thing for chewing on stuff so we keep the office door closed while we’re at work. But, we forgot to close it a few weeks ago and apparently we forgot again yesterday as well.

I noticed something interesting this time though, which is that all of the items from the office that she had chewed on were exactly the same items she had gotten to the last time, and that sent me on alert because last time it happened she had chewed up our SWTOR Collector’s Edition Security Key. I didn’t see it this time, but it was definitely there the last time, so I went on a hunt.

Living room? Not there.

Office? Not there.

Maybe my wife hid it somewhere so the dog wouldn’t get it again? Called her up – no answer.

Maybe she chewed it up in the den? Not there.
Maybe she took it to the backyard? Bingo.

The first time The Monster™ got her teeth on the security key she just damaged the case a bit, but it worked just fine. This time around, she punctured the display and completely destroyed it. If you push the button enough times you can get portions of a few of the numbers to light up, but the whole front half of it is totally busted.

Since my wife wasn’t home yet, and I knew she was likely to be pissed since it’s the one to her account, I decided to act quickly and called up Customer Support.

Victor answered the phone and we got into the problem, “My dog ate my wife’s security key and now it’s completely busted and I can’t use it. Is there any way we can get this one removed so I can replace it with one that works?” Victor didn’t even give me a chuckle, he just went straight into addressing the problem. I had the feeling this isn’t the first time he’s dealt with dogs eating security keys.

Since this was my wife’s account rather than my own, we had to go through several steps to verify the account. We started off with basic account information, which of course I knew, and then we got into security questions.

Question 1: Easy
Question 2: uhh…I have no idea.
Question 3: err…Even less of an idea than #2.
Question 4: “Are you sure you’re her husband?”

So we went through another route to verify that I was who I said I was, and that I had the right to access her account to remove the security key.

Overall, the whole thing took about 3 minutes once I got Victor on the phone.

I know a lot of people have complained on twitter, blogs and podcasts about how bad Bioware’s customer support is, but I had no trouble at all getting this issue resolved. Victor was nice, helpful, and understanding in the situation of it not being my account while also being open and thorough enough to verify that I was who I said and making sure that I had any right at all to access my wife’s account to remove the key.

This is the second time we’ve dealt with their CSR’s, and both of our experiences have been great. I figured it was about time someone shared some good experiences, and I just happened to have a good example.

5 responses to “My Dog Ate It…”

I’ve noticed that just in the last few weeks the customer service has improved. The few bug reports I’ve put in (to which I did not expect a response) were answered in a pointed and professional way (in one case suggesting workarounds until a patch could be put in to resolve the problem.)

My experiences with their CS have been in equal parts good and boneheaded. In fact, I had my first really positive experience with them right as the hype about bad service was starting to build up. I am really hopeful that they’re putting the chaos of launch behind them and settling in to the business of … you know… customer service. :P

I’m relieved to hear this! I’m using a mobile authenticator because I”m terrified to not use authenticators after I got hacked twice in WoW; but I never really wanted to use the mobile version, I was just using it in lieu of waiting for the key fob to get here. Unfortunately my apartment complex sat on the box for like a month, so I didn’t get it until recently. I expected to just be able to take it off in my account management like you can on WoW, but… you can’t. And I was really hesitant to call.

Totally going to have to get my mobile one removed so I can use my keyfob one now. :v